echo Written By: Fajar Binti Benjamin & Wai Wai
Edited By: Varshini Vijayakumar
Property Economic Series 2: What’s Next? was the sequel event to Property Economic Series 1, organised by Sunway Property Economic Society (SUNPES). The event took place at JC 2, University Building from 6pm to 10pm on Thursday 3rd May 2018. The event was a two-part talk delivered by Mr Faizul Ridzuan, author of bestseller “WTF, 23 Properties by 30” and Mr Michael Tan, author of number 1 bestseller “How you can be Financially free through Property Investment”. The purpose of the event was to provide students with the awareness and knowledge on how to make money through property investment.
The event kicked off with the first speaker, Mr Ridzuan, who’s talk was titled “What Should I Buy?”. He started off by painting a picture of his background. Being born in a low income family, he recounted how his father was a hard worker with three jobs but money in their family was scarce because of his lack of necessary knowledge on financial management. Mr Ridzuan learned an important lesson growing up; knowledge is needed for effort to result in anything.
Not one to mope about his hand in life, Mr Ridzuan started working odd jobs from the age of 13 and continued working part time up until his graduation from University Malaya with a Bachelor in Software Engineering. He met a lecturer at UM who changed his life. She always told her class, “Don’t buy a car when you graduate, buy a house”. She explained how she had bought and sold over 20 properties and that was how she financed her family’s travelling each year. Who wouldn’t want to travel the world essentially for free?
Another valuable lesson he imparted to us was that once you graduated, “Don’t go for the job that offers you the highest initial salary, go for the one that will teach you the most skills.” He himself went for a job that paid him only RM600 per month instead of RM1500. Soon enough he’d learned enough to move on to a job with five times the salary. As soon as he could, he bought a property. He let that sit as he continued down his career path, picking up 2 more houses by the time he was ready to ‘fire his boss’ at the age of 33. He sold the 3 houses, making half a million ringgit to finance his business ventures. He viewed the money as disposable, seeing as he had done so little to gain it.
Mr Ridzuan went on to impart a few more lessons to live by. He said, “Learn to speak English” and “Don’t blame others when things get difficult, upskill yourself instead” before he got to the heart of his talk. He said, “We need to start by buying residential properties, we need to make sure we know the area and the property well. Survey the area, don’t go for a place that is only beginning to develop unless you’re ready to play a long, long term game.” He threw out tips and plugged in his article that he has written on the subject:
https://faizulridzuan.com/property-investment/26-criterias/
He ended his session with a Q&A session and a challenge to the audience to write the best Facebook post on what they had learned from his talk and post it with a ‘wefie’ with him, to earn a free pass to his property investment course.
After a refreshment break, the 2nd session of the event started with the lead of Michael Tan, the CEO of Freemen Education. Freemen Education is a life transforming international education company across Thailand, Hong Kong and Malaysia aiming to help people on their journey of financial breakthrough and be their own millionaire. He started his session with his introduction and personal story where he achieved success and became rich at the age of 29 and lost everything at 31 years.
“It’s easy to win. It’s not easy to win again after you lose.” At the time when he was broke, he still constantly received rental from his tenants. This was the moment when he realised the importance and glory of passive income. He emphasized on the idea of growing money rather than making money (which is investment) as he believed money should be used to grow money. He then shared with the audience the fundamentals of property investment and he stressed that the three factors that will lead people to success are discipline, education and having a mentor.
He mentioned that there are two different approaches for property investment which are known as flip (buy to sell) and keep (buy to rent). Practicable calculations and techniques were taught. Although it sounded perplexing to the people who were not familiar with property investment, Michael’s sense of humor and interactive way of delivering enlightened the learning process for the audience. He leveraged on his tones, hand movements, and gestures while he was speaking and attracted the attention of the whole auditorium.
After a short break, audiences were given time for the Q&A session with Michael. The audience proactively asked questions mostly related to the fundings and the current market of property investment. A lucky draw session was carried out with the giveaway of Michael’s “How you can be Financially free through Property Investment” book later on. The event ended with audience becoming more wiser and motivated on their journey to property investment.
